


Steam

by AconitumNapellus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Bathtubs, First Kiss, Guilt, M/M, Slash, Venezia | Venice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-10-31 15:07:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17851904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: After a plunge into a Venice canal, Napoleon and Illya find themselves sharing a bath tub. Napoleon wants to take things further, but Illya has been fighting how he feels since he was a teen.





	1. Chapter 1

The steam is a cloud of tiny pearlescent droplets in the air, filling the whole room. It makes everything gauzy. There are lace curtains across the window, but even without them very little would be seen inside, because the air is so full of steam. The light is dim, a warm glow shining in globes from the chimneys of oil lamps and their steady flames. Every bead of vapour catches the golden light of the lamps, and the whole room seems to shimmer.

‘Come on,’ Napoleon says. ‘You’d better get those clothes off. You’ll catch your death of cold, and you have cuts that need seeing to.’

‘We both have cuts that need seeing to,’ Illya reminds him. ‘And people don’t catch cold. They just catch viruses when their immune system is depressed.’

‘And their immune systems get depressed when they’re cold, and hungry, and injured,’ Napoleon says pointedly. ‘Get in the bath, Kuryakin.’

‘The lady said there’s only enough water for one bath. Why don’t you get in?’ Illya objects. ‘You’re as wet as I am.’

‘The bath is a monster, and it’s big enough for both of us,’ Napoleon says. ‘So get in, scoot up to one end, and I’ll join you.’

Illya eyes the bath doubtfully. Sharing that, with Napoleon? He’s shared plenty of experiences with him before. He’s been to Turkish baths and saunas with him more times than he can count, sometimes wrapped in towels, sometimes stripped to the skin. It’s one of the luxuries that Napoleon loves, especially when he can find a reason to charge it to the U.N.C.L.E. expense account. He’s showered with him after gym sessions in headquarters time and time again. Usually then his mind is full of the mission they’re in the middle of, or he’s tired from working out, and it’s easy to concentrate on nothing more than cleaning himself or soaking in the steam and talking. Now, though… Technically, the mission is over, although they’re still in Venice. There are just the injuries to tidy up, the flight home to book, and the reports to write up. Technically, although he’s shared bathing experiences with Napoleon, he’s never sat in a steaming, up-to-the-neck-full, claw-footed old bath with him. He’s not sure how to manage that.

‘Get on in,’ Napoleon says again. ‘CEA’s decision.

Illya huffs, and starts to take off his clothes. They’re ripped and dirty and wet, anyway. They’re bloodstained in places, too. Neither of them have suffered severe injuries. There’s nothing that can’t be treated in the hotel room with iodine and a few bandages. It’s enough to sting, though, and enough to want to wash thoroughly to get the canal water out of them. He hates to think what might be stirred into those foetid canals. The whole of Venice has stunk the entire time they’ve been here.

A few feet away, Napoleon is stripping too. He fell into the same canal as Illya; or, at least, Napoleon fell in and Illya dived in after him to pull him out. Diving can’t quite be put in the same class as slipping on the slush on a snowy walkway, and plunging into the water with arms and legs flailing. At least his own entry had grace.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says, as if he’s reading Illya’s mind. ‘I know. You don’t have to say anything.’

‘I haven’t said anything,’ Illya replies, pushing his trousers down and kicking them aside. ‘Anyway, your clumsiness worked out well. If you hadn’t tumbled in I wouldn’t have gone in, and I wouldn’t have had the – ’ He grasps for words.

Napoleon grins, unknotting his tie as if he’s just come in from an evening of fine dining, not a deadly scuffle and an impromptu canal swim in a Venice snowstorm.

‘Elegance?’ he asks. ‘Strategic forethought? Panic reaction?’

Illya scoffs. ‘I wouldn’t have thought to drag you underwater so we could come up beside that sight-seeing boat, and we wouldn’t have got away from those thugs by holding on to the fender while it carried us all the way down the Rio de le Muneghete.’

‘A stroke of genius,’ Napoleon says. ‘That’s why I love you. Now, get in the bath.’

Illya kicks his clothes aside and steps over to the bath. It’s a beast, bigger than any he’s seen before, with the taps in the middle instead of at one end. It’s so obviously a bath made for two.

He looks down into the water, at the rippling patterns the light makes on the white enamel. He lifts his leg, puts one toe in, and hisses.

‘Hot, huh?’ Napoleon asks. ‘It’s good for you.’

‘It’s hot after being out there,’ Illya says, jerking his head towards the door. ‘I didn’t realise it could snow in Venice.’

‘It’s good for you to not know everything. I didn’t expect the snow, and I didn’t expect a freak hailstorm to take out the power, either. But here we are.’

Yes, here they are. Napoleon is naked now, his clothes draped over the back of an elegant wood carved chair. There’s a slow drip, drip onto the tiles from the sodden garments. Illya glances up at him, then looks back into the bath water. That one glance was quick and casual, but he has a very good memory. He can see Napoleon in his mind, standing there, skin pink with cold, and wet, his muscles all contoured by the golden light in this room. He’s seen him like that often enough. He always manages to make his glances look casual, and he always keeps the image in his mind like a photograph, because there are some things one just can’t have, and the best one can do is cling to memories.

Sometimes he wants Napoleon so badly that it hurts. It’s like a welling of a terrible poison inside him, flooding up from somewhere in his pelvis, swelling through his chest. It makes his mind fuzzy, and then the self-loathing erupts, creeping through every synapse of his brain until he is in a whirl, wondering how on earth he has come to be in this position. How, as an inconsequential Ukrainian scientist, has he ended up as a cool, calculating agent based in New York City, with a shameful and terrible lust for his partner overtaking all of his higher reasoning? He thinks of the disgust that people express over feelings like that. He thinks of the disdain of his superiors back in the Soviet Union, and the sight of shuffling men being loaded into a laundry van on their way to the trains. He hadn’t been supposed to see, of course. That’s why they sent men off in vans like that, so people didn’t realise it was men being transported to the gulag. But he had seen them, and he had known. Some of them would have been artists. Some of them would have been thieves. Some of them would have been political dissidents. And some would have been the worst of all, craven опущенные, men who loved men, sent to the gulag to rot.

Sometimes the thoughts in his head make him sick.

‘Get in,’ Napoleon says. ‘Or you’ll just have one very clean leg.’

He’s standing there with one leg in the bath, one on the floor, just thinking. The warm steam is swirling around him. He shakes himself and steps into the bath, sinking down into the warm embrace of the water. It stings into his cuts. It feels so good all around him. It starts to impart heat back into a body that had all the warmth sapped from it by a Venetian canal.

‘That’s good,’ Napoleon says.

Illya looks up. Napoleon is stepping into the bath at the other end. The steam looks like a veil around him, but Illya can see well enough. There’s a very little hair on his well developed chest. His arms are slim but strong. His abdomen is taut, flat, dimpled by his navel. Below, the hair is very dark, surrounding a cock which is tight to his body because of the cold. Once he’s in the water it will start to hang loose again, and move as the water moves, and – 

He’s been sitting in the water, just gazing at Napoleon as he lifts one leg, tests the water, winces a little at the heat, then gets in anyway. Napoleon sinks down to face him, legs hitched up, knees dropping apart to rest against the sides of the bath. There’s not a jot of self-consciousness in him at all. Their legs cross at the calves, skin touching skin. Napoleon’s feet almost brush against the backs of Illya’s thighs. Almost.

‘You’re a little red,’ Napoleon mentions. ‘In the face, I mean.’

‘Well, it’s hot in here,’ Illya replies, sounding much more composed than he feels. It’s such an enticing sight, seeing Napoleon’s body like that, dappled by the light through the water, his body hair moving slowly in the currents. He thinks of seaweed on a sunny day, drawn back and forth by the motion of the waves.

He drops his gaze back to his own body, to his rather knobbly knees, legs that he’s always thought are too thin, feet that are too large. He looks down at his cock, and looks away. He’s not really sure if he’s of average size or not. Maybe he is, but he’s never thought he measures up to what other men must look like. Maybe that’s the curse of all men. It’s impossible to tell, anyway, in this bath water, after coming in from the freezing cold. Things are only just starting to loosen.

‘Let me have a look at your hands,’ Napoleon says, and, dutifully, Illya holds them out.

His hands are like his feet. Overlarge for his small body size. His mother used to call them spades. Right now there’s a nail torn on one of his fingers, so low down that it’s bleeding, and he has a cut across the palm of the same hand. That’s what comes of grabbing out in murky water, searching for your sinking partner, and coming across god-knows-what junk down there in the dark.

‘You’ve had your tetanus booster?’ Napoleon asks, concerned.

‘Yes, of course,’ Illya assures him. ‘They wouldn’t have let me out of HQ otherwise.’

‘Good,’ Napoleon says.

He closes his hand around Illya’s left hand, that only has barked knuckles. He holds it long enough that Illya feels new heat in his face. His hands are bigger than Napoleon’s even though Napoleon is taller than him. He feels so conscious of his over-sized hands and feet.

‘I never noticed how big your hands are,’ Napoleon says, still holding Illya’s hand in his.

Illya retrieves his hand and sinks it back under the water.

‘Is there soap?’ he asks.

‘Uh – ’

Napoleon looks around, then sees a soap dish behind the taps at the centre of the bath. He holds it on his palms like an offering. Illya takes it. It does feel like an offering. There’s something about Napoleon, something about the way he approaches the world. He makes everything seem like a work of art, simultaneously frivolous and imbued with deep, deep meaning.

Napoleon gives him a flannel, and he uses it to lather up a rich whipped cream of soap. At least as he washes he can focus on nothing but himself. He can see the white foam moving up and down his forearms, dragging the hair this way and that, stinging in scrapes and sluicing away the filth from the canal.

‘I’ll put iodine on those later,’ Napoleon tells him, and Illya laughs.

‘I can put iodine on my own cuts,’ he says.

Napoleon always comes so close to him, in the way he talks, the way he looks, the way he moves. It’s as if personal space doesn’t exist to him. Illya doesn’t mind. He doesn’t notice Napoleon coming into his personal space just as you don’t notice a pet or a loved one coming closer than you would ever let an acquaintance come. Napoleon is so much more than an acquaintance.

He sees how close Napoleon’s feet are to his thighs. They’re so nearly touching. It’s as if his partner just doesn’t feel the invisible barriers that most people erect. Then Napoleon reaches to take the cloth, and his foot moves a little more, and suddenly it’s touching. Not moving. Not stroking. Just touching, the electric contact of Napoleon’s toes against the shivering back of Illya’s thigh.

‘Got that soap?’ Napoleon asks.

His fingers touch Illya’s at the same time, slipping against them, the soapy foam making it impossible to grasp. The soap drops with a splash, and they both look down. It’s there in the water, a little cloud around it, just between Illya’s thighs. It’s so close to his body, so close to where his buttocks sit on the bottom of the bath, to where his balls lie slack in their soft sack, to where his cock is half-lost in a drift of hair.

Napoleon reaches out his hand under the water, and Illya darts his own hand down like a kingfisher plunging for a fish. They both reach the soap simultaneously, and it slips, touching Illya’s body. Napoleon’s hand wins the prize, and he lifts it, triumphant.

His fingers brushed Illya’s buttock, right where it touches the bottom of the bath. He feels as if he’s been burnt. Napoleon’s hand is out of the water, but he can still feel his fingers down there.

‘I should – get washed and get out,’ Illya says, not lifting his eyes to Napoleon’s face. ‘I’m taking up too much space. How can you wash yourself properly with me in here?’

He looks up then, and Napoleon looks up, and their eyes meet. Napoleon’s eyes are a softer brown through the haze in the air. There is a vivid purple-red bruise spreading around his left eye. There’s a bead of water on the end of his nose, and water on his lips. The quiet seems so large that it’s something Illya can feel all over his skin. There are just the small noises of the water, and breath. Nothing but that.

‘Stay,’ Napoleon says, and his voice is very soft. He puts out a hand and rests it on Illya’s knee, one of the knees he thinks are knobbly and best covered up. Napoleon puts his hand on it as if it’s the most important thing in the world. ‘Stay,’ he says again.

Illya feels as though he’s tried to swallow a brick, sideways. For a moment he can’t talk. He doesn’t know what Napoleon might be reading in his face, but he struggles to bring his expression back to something neutral, then to amusement. Anything to cover up those feelings that are threatening to overpower him, the molten feeling in his loins which is swiftly followed by the cold of shame.

‘Are you trying to seduce me?’ Illya asks, half joking, half very, very serious. There’s such a welling of uncertainty in him, liquid as the bath water, spreading through his bones.

‘Yes,’ Napoleon says plainly, his eyes never leaving Illya’s. ‘Yes, I am.’

It’s like coming back from fainting. He’s not sure quite where he went, but for a little space of time there was nothing. Now he’s aware of the water vapour in the air again, and the soft gold of the oil lamps, and the lapping of the water. He’s aware of the bluster of wind and winter sleet against the window, and the richly coloured walls, and the ornate ceiling. But at the centre of all of that he’s aware of Napoleon, sitting right there in front of him, his legs resting against Illya’s legs, his eyes looking straight into Illya’s as if for him he didn’t vanish at all.

‘I – ’ Illya says.

There’s no point in pretending to be composed. He doesn’t know how.

‘Yes,’ Napoleon says again. His eyes are like chocolate. His hair is damp from the canal still, and dewed with a million beads of water from the steam. ‘Yes, Illya Nikolaevich Kuryakin, I am trying to seduce you, in Venice, in a beautiful five hundred year old palazzo hotel, in a hot tub in a black out, with oil lamps lighting my way. Yes, I am trying to seduce you.’

‘I – ’ Illya says again.

Usually he can think of something to say. Now he can’t. Now the feelings of desire and shame are rising to such a point in him that he can’t think of a single word. He feels like a man addicted to drugs, who has been working so, so hard at staying clean, but has suddenly been offered a wrap of cocaine, no strings attached, no price. _Take it. You’ll feel so good_.

‘Illya, did I get it wrong?’ Napoleon asks, his voice softer still. His eyes are soft with something else now, something like sorrow that feels like a knife to Illya’s heart. ‘Illya, did I read you all wrong?’

Naked together, in a bath, in the flickering light of real flame. What an awful place that would be to be wrong. How can he lie?

‘No,’ he says. That’s such a huge admission, but he will admit it to Napoleon. ‘No, I – You read me all right. But – ’

Napoleon reaches out a hand, but this time he doesn’t touch Illya. His hand hovers there, dripping, above the water.

‘Is there a problem?’ he asks. ‘Illya?’

Illya swallows, his eyes on the light reflecting on the surface of the water. He knows Napoleon so, so well, and he hardly knows how to speak.

‘I – have been fighting for years,’ he murmurs.

‘Fighting?’

He looks up again. ‘Fighting. Almost since I first met you.  _ Wanting  _ you, almost since I first met you.’

‘ _ Illya _ ,’ Napoleon says. He reaches his hand that extra inch, and his fingers hook around Illya’s, just the ends of his fingers around the ends of Illya’s, such a light hold. ‘Then why didn’t you say something?’

‘Napoleon, do you understand how these feelings are seen by the world?’ Illya asks, a little desperation in his voice.

‘The world.’ Napoleon tosses that away, as if the world were utterly insignificant, as if the only world he wanted were contained within this room. ‘Some sneering looks, a couple of insults. It’s easy enough if you’re careful, Illya. It’s just a question of being discreet.’

‘It is  _ not _ just a question of being discreet,’ Illya snaps. He feels anger inside him, quick and hot. His accent touches his words more strongly as he remembers his home. ‘No, Napoleon. It is being beaten in the night, beaten to death. It is being taken into a building and never coming out again. It is being arrested and packed in a railway wagon like an animal going to slaughter, and sent thousands of miles to a place where one hangs onto life by one’s fingernails, surrounded by barbed wire and guns, beaten and sodomised by the prisoners and the guards alike, and worked into one’s grave. It is a – a foul, filthy perversion, Napoleon. An illness which kills.’

‘ _ Illya! _ ’

Napoleon twists his hand, jerking it forwards so that he’s holding onto it properly now, his fingers so tight around Illya’s hand that it hurts.

‘I have  _ fought  _ this, Napoleon,’ Illya insists. There is a little sob in his voice. ‘I have fought it since I was thirteen and I first fell in love with another boy. I fight it every day.’

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says again.

It’s as if, to Napoleon, his name is an invocation, a prayer. Napoleon slips closer in the bath, so close that their legs really are tangled now, close enough so that he can put his arms about Illya’s shoulders and hug him close. Illya stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away. He lets Napoleon sit there with his arms about him, looking over his partner’s shoulder, down his back. He sees the great darkening bloom of a bruise on Napoleon’s flank, and another on his hip, and a place where he has been scraped over something rough, and blood came in little lines. He sees the twin curves of his buttocks and the split between, and something lurches in him. That lust rises, and mixes again with self-loathing.

‘It’s all right, Illya,’ Napoleon says softly. ‘You’re not in the Soviet Union. You’re in the USA now.’

‘Homosexuality is illegal in the USA too.’

‘Not like it is in the Soviet Union,’ Napoleon assures him. ‘Not like that.’

‘I’m in Venice,’ Illya murmurs. ‘We’re in Venice. I don’t even know what the law is – ’

‘In this beautiful Catholic country,’ Napoleon whispers close to his ear, ‘homosexuality has been legal since the end of the nineteenth century.’

Slowly, Illya relaxes in Napoleon’s arms. It feels like such a safe harbour to be in. He lifts his arms enough to slip them around his partner’s body. He rests his hands lightly on his back.

He can feel Napoleon’s heart beating under his palms, thrumming through his ribs. He can feel the heat of his skin, slippery with water. He feels so solid. He feels so safe.

‘You are beautiful,’ Napoleon says.

He doesn’t say it like a line of seduction. He says it like a fact. Illya snorts a little, though.

‘I am small, and puny,’ he says.

‘You are a loaded gun,’ Napoleon replies. ‘You are unbelievably strong. You are supple as a gymnast. You are razor sharp.’

‘You are mixing your metaphors.’

Illya rests his head on Napoleon’s shoulder, looking out towards the room. The flames in the oil lamps steadily stream upwards, vaporising to nothing but a little heat ripple in the air. The patterns on the walls catch little lines of light. Napoleon’s shoulder is so comfortable. It feels so right.

He lifts his head and sits there, still so close to Napoleon they are entangled, just looking into his eyes. Napoleon gazes steadily back. His eyes are like pools.

Napoleon leans forward a little, and his lips touch Illya’s. They are wet with steam. They move so softly on Illya’s, so gently. He lets his lips part, and Napoleon’s tongue is touching his, is flicking so delicately into his mouth. He tastes faintly of pineapple.

A drug, Illya thinks.  _ Take it. You’ll feel so good _ .

He feels so good. Napoleon’s lips are so soft. Those feelings are moving in his abdomen, those little shooting sparks of electricity running right down into his cock. Such a feeling, this is. He has never kissed a man. He feels the slight stubble that is sharp on Napoleon’s cheeks. He feels the strength in Napoleon’s hands on his shoulders, a hand on his neck, then in his hair.

The kiss ends, and he breathes in air. He is dizzy. He hadn’t realised he had stopped breathing.

‘Was that foul, Illya?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Was that perverted?’

Illya drops his head. Those feelings are running through him like rats in a maze.

‘It wasn’t foul,’ he says. ‘But perverted – ’

There’s disappointment in Napoleon’s eyes. He reaches out a hand and touches Illya’s cheek, very softly. There’s a bruise there, under Napoleon’s cupping palm. Someone punched him, and the pain is throbbing and sharp.

‘Perverted, Illya? Really? You’re not religious, are you?’ 

‘Nature – ’ Illya begins, flailing.

‘No,’ Napoleon says softly. ‘ _ You  _ are natural, Illya. Don’t let anyone make you believe this isn’t natural. It’s other people who’ve told you this is wrong. Since when has Illya Kuryakin been a slave to other people’s narrow little thoughts?’ 

The feelings writhe inside him. It’s not something he can throw away, just because Napoleon says he should. Napoleon, who would sleep with anyone and everyone. Napoleon, whose moral code is strong, but very much his own.

‘It – is not so easy to throw off what has been told to you by society for all of your life,’ Illya says. ‘It is not so easy to throw off guilt and shame.’

Napoleon sighs. He picks up the flannel and rubs soap into it, and starts to lather it over his arms and chest. Illya watches his movements, watching his grace, the way his muscles are hidden then revealed as the foam moves about on his skin.

‘I can do your back,’ he offers. He feels as though he needs to offer something.

‘Thanks,’ Napoleon replies, and his smile is open and forgiving. He reaches out a hand and touches something near Illya’s temple. ‘You have weed in your hair,’ he says, pulling out a brown strand, and tossing it away.

Illya wrinkles his nose, then bends forward and dips his head down under the water. It’s a short moment, but it feels long. He turns his neck this way and that, feeling his hair drifting about his head, washing out the dirt. He keeps his eyes closed and holds his breath, and stays down there for a beat, two beats, three, four. Then he lifts his head up and the water streams down over his face. He pushes it away with the palm of his hand.

‘I can only dream of being that flexible,’ Napoleon murmurs, and manages to make the words sound suggestive. He’s good at that.

‘If you spent time stretching,’ Illya begins.

Napoleon laughs. ‘I know. I know. I’d be like you. A cat in black. I don’t know, Illya. Some people are naturally flexible. My toes have always felt a very long way away from my fingertips, no matter how far I bend.’ He dips his hands into the water, making a bowl, and scoops it over his own head. The water cascades down his face, and he splutters. ‘Let me do your back first,’ he says. ‘Go on. Turn around.’

Somehow, it’s easier to face Napoleon than it is to turn away. He does it, though. He turns himself in the enamel confines of the bath, the water slopping about, so that he is sitting with his hands resting on the curving edge of the bath end, his head a little dipped, steam moving in whorls in front of his eyes.

There’s the first touch. Maybe that’s why it’s hard. It’s the vulnerability of having his back turned. He feels the warm, wet cloth moving soap across his skin.

‘You’ve got a good few bruises,’ Napoleon tells him.

‘No worse than you’ve got,’ Illya shrugs.

‘Here,’ Napoleon says, touching his skin lightly with his bare fingertips. ‘And here, and here.’

He moves the flannel about Illya’s neck, lifting up warm water and letting it drench down over him.

‘A very attractive neck,’ Napoleon murmurs, and Illya scoffs.

‘A neck is a neck.’

‘Oh, no,’ Napoleon says softly. ‘No, your neck is very much your own, Illya. I like the way it starts where your ears are, and runs down to your shoulders.’

‘Like every neck,’ Illya interrupts.

‘Yes, in a way, or your head would fall off. But you have a strong neck, Illya. I like the shape of your ears. I like that place where your hair’s shorter, the nape of your neck.’

He gently passes the cloth over that place, then leads it on down Illya’s spine.

‘Your back,’ he says. ‘Did you know you have a very attractive back?’

‘Don’t be silly, Napoleon,’ Illya says. He can’t think of any of himself as attractive. He thinks of his skinny body and his oversized hands and feet. He thinks of how small he is. ‘You don’t have to try to seduce me, you know. You can’t woo me with words.’

‘Then how can I woo you, Illya?’ Napoleon asks, his tone so direct that Illya flinches.

‘It – isn’t right,’ he says.

He closes his eyes, feeling the movement of Napoleon’s hands on his skin. It feels so right. How can it feel so right, and be so wrong?

‘Give me one good reason,’ Napoleon says. ‘Something not connected to society or God or the moral laws laid down by men. Give me something you actually believe in. Something based in science.’

He hangs his head. He rests his head down on his arms, on the edge of the bath, the whole of his back bare and turned to Napoleon. He feels so vulnerable, but he feels so safe.

‘I – don’t have anything,’ he says in the end. He can’t think of a single thing. He just knows that it’s wrong.

‘You’re done,’ Napoleon says, splashing a last bit of water over Illya’s back. ‘Will you do mine?’

He turns, and by the time he has manoeuvred himself around, Napoleon has too, so he’s facing the other end of the bath. The cloth is lying over the edge of the bath, with the soap on top of it. Illya lathers it up, and puts the soap aside.

Napoleon’s back looks very long. It is tanned despite it being winter here. They just spent long enough south of the equator for them both to gain healthy tans. He sees the dip of his spine running from his neck down to the split of his buttocks. He sees the bruises and scrapes. He sits and looks at the back of Napoleon’s head, the short, dark hair black with wet, the curves of his ears. He wants to slip his arms around Napoleon’s sides and lay his palms on his ribs and feel his heartbeat. He wants – god, he wants more than that. He wants to kiss him and kiss him. He wants to do terrible things. He thinks of Napoleon’s cock, and what it must look like when it’s hard and ready, and heat flushes into his face.

Is it so wrong? Can it really be so wrong?

He touches Napoleon’s back with the flannel, gently easing away dirt around the cuts and bruises. Napoleon flexes and sighs a little at the touch, and something flares deep in Illya’s groin. If only. If only…

‘You’re clean,’ he says.

He hasn’t spent as long on Napoleon as Napoleon did on him. He can’t bear to. He rinses out the flannel in the water, and sits there while Napoleon turns around.

‘A bath is a hell of a place to make romantic overtures, when those overtures are rebuffed,’ Napoleon says rather sadly.

‘I’m not – ’ Illya begins.

‘You _are_ rebuffing me, Illya,’ Napoleon says firmly. ‘This is rebuffing. It’s how it works.’

‘I don’t – ’ Illya clears his throat. ‘This is very difficult for me,’ he says, in a controlled tone. ‘It’s – a lot to overcome, for a – a fling which will be forgotten in a week’s time.’

Napoleon’s eyes widen a little. ‘Is that what you think, Illya? That I want a fling that I’ll forget in a week?’

‘Well, isn’t that how it works with you?’ Illya shrugs. ‘That is how your romantic relationships progress. They are spring flowers, Napoleon. In full bloom for a few days, before they wither away.’

Napoleon reaches out a hand, touching his fingers lightly to the underneath of Illya’s chin.

‘You’re no spring flower, Illya. A tree, perhaps. A young oak. I’ve been with you for a long time. I don’t want to forget you in a week, or two weeks, or two months, or two years. I spend most of my life with you. I have no reason to want to change that.’

Illya feels as if someone has stolen his breath. Outside, snow whips at the window. Inside, the steam rising from the water is growing less as the heat in the bath tries to equalise itself with the cool in the room.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says, his hand still touching his chin. ‘Remember to breathe, my friend.’

‘Yes,’ Illya says, then a little more strongly, ‘Yes. I am breathing. I know how to breathe.’

‘I want to teach you to do more than breathe,’ Napoleon tells him.

Illya blinks. He can already do many, many more things than breathe, but he thinks he knows what Napoleon means. There’s a world of difference between just breathing, and living. He’s no tragic case, going through the motions of life without feeling it. He feels the joy of being alive on every mission he takes. But there is something missing, some piece of the jigsaw that makes up life. Ever since he first understood that he was afflicted with a sickness that made women dull to him, and men beautiful, he had felt that the missing piece could never be found.

Is Napoleon the piece that would complete him? Could that really be true? Ever since he first walked into U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York, first shook Napoleon’s hand and sat down to talk to him, that missing piece had felt within reach. Within reach, but forbidden. It is the most awful thing, like starving within the reach of a banquet.

‘I’m clean,’ he says quickly. ‘The water’s getting cold.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Napoleon replies quietly.

Illya is out of the bath without looking back, water pooling on the floor around him, streaming from his limbs. He picks up a towel and rubs it over his skin, heedless of the cuts and bruises. He hears Napoleon get out, and looks round, and sees him standing there. He’s wet and warm and beautiful. It’s too much to see him like that, knowing how he feels. Desire and love and shame are jostling inside his rib cage. It’s just too much.

He turns to his clothes, but they’re sopping wet and stinking with canal water, a curious mixture of the scents of sewage and brine. He can’t wear them. He wraps the towel around his waist, instead, and feels a curious sense of protection in that small amount of cover.

‘I think these are fit for the trash,’ Napoleon says, poking at his own clothes. ‘Mr Waverly will be delighted.’

He wraps himself in his own towel, tucking it neatly into itself about his slim waist. That feels like another level of protection to Illya, for Napoleon to be covered up too.

‘We’ll have to go back to the room like this,’ Napoleon continues. ‘I’ll call down and see if they can rustle up anything to eat in the blackout.’

‘God, yes, I’m starving,’ Illya murmurs.

‘And we’re going to talk,’ Napoleon says, looking up at him, fixing him with his eyes.

‘Talk,’ Illya says, trying not to sigh. ‘Yes.’

Napoleon takes a step closer. He is so close that he is way inside Illya’s personal space, so close to him he can feel his breath.

‘Illya, I’d like to do that again,’ he says, and at the little crease between Illya’s eyebrows he clarifies, ‘To kiss you. I’d like to kiss you again.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says.

His lips part with the word. He doesn’t move away. It’s wrong, he knows. It’s wrong to want this. It’s wrong to court this. But there is no scientific reason to call it wrong. He does know that. He knows that the animal kingdom presents examples of homosexuality, especially in  the  apes, of which he is one. He knows that God is a myth, and Stalin was a flawed man. It’s just that the feeling of  _wrongness_ has been layered up in his mind, layer after layer like a mineral deposit, until it is a shell so thick it obscures and distorts everything beneath.  _Wrongness_ has been in every breath of every person that he grew up alongside. Scorn and disgust and fear and hatred are hard things to dismiss.

But his lips are parted, and Napoleon is so close to him, and all of his desire is a burning flame. It’s something that is starting to burn those layers away, and scatter them into ash. It is possible, perhaps, to burn these things away. It’s possible to turn one’s back on all the quiet voices of one’s youth.

Napoleon tilts forward. Illya lifts his chin. It’s almost impossible to resist. When he’s this close to Napoleon he feels as if he’s under a spell.

Napoleon’s lips touch his again, warm and hesitant. It is a quick, chaste kiss, and then he stops. Without meaning to, Illya sighs regret.

Napoleon’s lips touch his again, more firmly, and he lets himself fall into the kiss. He lets his mouth open. He tastes Napoleon’s tongue again, and moves his own forward so that he is touching Napoleon’s teeth, the inside of his mouth. It’s like drinking wine after being dry all day. He lifts up his hand and touches the back of Napoleon’s neck, still damp from the bath. Napoleon’s arms come around him, and they are touching, chest against chest, kissing so hard he forgets to breathe. He can feel so much of Napoleon against him, the firm flatness of his chest, the press of his pelvis wrapped in towelling, the hook of one leg around his own.

As if drinking wine after being dry all day, he becomes intoxicated, his hands on Napoleon’s neck, his back, in his hair. It is like falling into another world. Finally, he is grasping that missing piece of the puzzle, holding onto something that might save him from drowning. The water beneath him is very deep, and there is a long way to sink to the bottom, but he starts to feel that as long as he holds on, he will never stop floating.

‘There,’ Napoleon says at last, when their lips finally part.

His hand is on Illya’s back, Illya’s hand still in his hair. Their faces are so close together they are exchanging their breaths. The flame is still burning inside Illya’s body, incandescing like the flames in those oil lamps, filling up the space and glowing out into the world.

‘Can we talk, Illya?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Can we go back to our room, and talk?’

‘Yes,’ Illya says.

He means it with all of his heart. He wants to be saved by Napoleon’s words. There is nothing more he wants than to be saved.


	2. Chapter 2

The room is warm despite the power cut and the sleeting snow outside. There is a fire burning in the grate, the coals glowing red into the room. More oil lamps are hung from the walls. Napoleon closes the curtains so tightly that the edges overlap, but outside there is the sound of the biting wind, and little spatters of frozen water hitting the windows. The walls are lined with silk of a deep red, the wide bed covered in dark red cloth. The whole place looks like a picture of temptation, conjured up by the devil. Illya looks as though he doesn’t know where to put himself, where to stand. To sit on the bed would look like a capitulation. Instead, he crosses the room to an ornate cushioned chair, and sits down. He’s right by the window, right by those tightly closed curtains. It’s as if he’s seated himself by a means of escape, but he’s still wearing nothing more than a towel.

Napoleon doesn’t know how to start talking. He doesn’t know what to say. This thing in Illya is so deep and so ingrained he doesn’t know how to challenge it. It’s been building all his life, reinforced by everyone he meets. It will take a long time to undo the damage.

‘Illya,’ he says. There’s a start. That’s something. 

Illya looks up briefly, then twitches a finger between the curtains, taking a quick look outside. The rain is still clattering on the glass. It sounds half frozen. 

‘I don’t know,’ Illya says. ‘I just don’t know, Napoleon. I don’t know what to say.’

Napoleon laughs morosely. ‘Well, that’s two of us.’

He breathes hard, and paces across the room, from the fireplace to the window, and back again. He rubs his hands over his face.

‘Illya, I don’t want this to have ruined things,’ he says. ‘I don’t want it to have ruined  _ us _ .’

Illya looks as lost as Napoleon feels.

‘I don’t think it’s ruined us,’ he says. ‘I don’t think we’re that weak. Are we?’ 

He looks up, appealing, and his face is shaded in gold from the lamp, warm bronze from the fire. His face makes Napoleon’s heart leap.

‘I don’t think we’re that weak,’ Napoleon says. He walks back to where Illya sits, and holds out a hand. To his amazement, Illya takes it, and stands up.

‘We’re both wearing towels,’ Illya says, rather self consciously. 

‘We’ve both worn less,’ Napoleon reminds him. 

‘True,’ Illya says,  and his lips quirk with a very small smile .

‘This is very new to me, too,’ Napoleon admits then, looking right into Illya’s face. ‘I’ve done this before. I mean, I’ve been with a man before, Illya. But not with _you_. You’re new territory for me.’

‘You’ve been with a man before?’ Illya asks, sounding startled. Then he laughs, and says, ‘Of course. You’ve been with everyone, haven’t you?’

Napoleon feels a little sliver of hurt, but he pushes it away. Illya’s right. Of course he is. Yes, Napoleon has been with everyone. Men or women, he doesn’t mind. It’s harder with men, but it has its own rewards.

‘I’ve been with a few,’ he says. He doesn’t want to talk about it, not like a man would speak of his time with women. He doesn’t want to compare Illya to those other men. Illya is so different.

Illya stands there, just looking at him. It’s hard to read his eyes, hard to know what’s going through his head. Then he lifts a hand and touches Napoleon’s cheek. He cradles it with his palm.

‘Napoleon, I have never been as close to anyone as I have been to you,’ he admits. ‘I’ve never let anyone come that close to me. I have – held feelings for you for a long, long time.’

‘Would acting on them be so wrong?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Illya, you’ve never been a man to let other people tell you how to live. Not me, not anyone else. Will you let _them_ dictate this?’

Something hardens in Illya’s jaw. He suddenly looks a degree more masculine, and, correspondingly, something weakens in Napoleon’s centre. It’s like a little melting inside him. He can’t resist Illya. He never could.

He can see a fire lighting. This is the look Illya gets when he’s about to do something drastic. It’s how he looks when he’s got a backpack full of explosives and he’s about to sneak into a populated enemy fortress and set the charges to bring it to the ground. It’s how he looks when he’s carrying the largest gun U.N.C.L.E. supplies, and is about to take on Thrush at a ratio of twenty to one.

Then Illya’s hand is hard against his chest. He’s pushing him backwards, and Napoleon goes. He wouldn’t move for anyone else but Illya. He lets him push him back to the bed. He stumbles with the softness of the mattress against the back of his knees, and lets himself fall back. Illya is unhitching the towel from around  Napoleon’s waist and pulling it aside.  Illya’s own towel is dropping. They’re both naked, and Illya’s eyes look wild. Illya straddles him,  touches him with hot, damp flesh , and – oh, god, he’s hardening. He sees Illya’s cock hardening, and his own is following suit. The desire thrills through him. He hasn’t wanted it this badly in a long while.

Illya comes down over him, kissing him, lean and intense with need. Their cocks are grinding together between them, heat against heat. That feeling of Illya’s hardness against him is incredible. It’s so incredible it’s hard to hold on. How long has it been since he’s felt this close to the edge, this soon? He puts his hand down, pushing between them, so he can feel the heat of Illya’s flesh in his fingers, so he can press it harder against his own. He tries to hold himself back, but Illya is making such needful little sounds, and he is moving, thrusting into Napoleon’s clenched fingers, and suddenly Napoleon is coming, and Illya is crying out, and his hand is sticky and slick, and he feels as though he has just travelled through the stars.

He lies there, amazed. Illya is on top of him, somehow limp but hard with energy all at once. Their breathing mingles. He wants to kiss him, but Illya seems as though he’s in another place. He seems so far away.

They just lie like that, breathing. Then Illya jerks to his feet, wiping himself off with the damp bath towel. He stalks about the room, pulling underwear from his suitcase, then a black t-shirt, slacks. He pulls the shirt on over still-damp hair, thrusts his legs into the slacks.

‘Illya, where are you going?’ Napoleon asks. 

‘Bathroom,’ Illya mutters, pushing his feet into shoes.  His accent is thicker than usual. He leaves the room without looking back.

Napoleon just lies there for a moment, naked on the bed, eyes on the hotel room door. There’s a sticky mess of come on his belly, his and Illya’s, intermingled. He moves his hand to it, almost touches it, then doesn’t. His and Illya’s seed, together… 

He thinks of the sound of Illya’s footsteps going down the tiled corridor. Not to the left, where the bathroom  i s. 

He sits up straight on the bed. Not to the left. Illya had gone to the right. His footsteps had been sharp and fast, going to the right, towards – the staircase, and the front door… 

He’s up almost as fast as Illya. It had been urgency for the bathroom, he had thought, but now he can read it as a different urgency. He sees Illya in his mind’s eye, moving with the kind of suppressed haste he has when he needs to get away from an enemy. From an enemy… 

He is dressed and following Illya’s path to the door before he stops and thinks. He’s an agent. He’s still an agent. He picks up his gun. The first thing he did, any agent would do, on getting back to the hotel, was take apart and clean and dry his gun. Illya had done the same. While the bath was being drawn, they had both serviced their guns and put them back into fighting condition. His holster is wrecked, but he slips both guns into his pockets. His wallet is still a sodden lump from the canal, so he pulls a little sheaf of Italian bank notes from the concealed pocket in his suitcase. He pats his pockets again, feeling the weight of the guns. Illya had gone out into the streets without his gun. God. Is that how bad this is?

Outside, the wind is howling and rain is lashing down, half-frozen, almost sleet. The city is dark around him. The pavements are empty. How odd places become in a blackout. Everything is quiet, except for the sound of wind and rain. 

If only the rain were snow. He could follow Illya’s footsteps in that. This sleety rain shows nothing. Instead, he has to think. He thinks about Illya, and how he knows him. He knows him  _ so  _ well; or, at least, he thought he did. Illya is a prowling cat. Where would he go? He’s scared. Where would he go?

He looks left and right, and goes left. God, but this place is a maze. He doesn’t have Illya’s facility for memorising street plans. He recognises the alleys right around the hotel, though. All those narrow little calles with their uneven flags and the buildings crowding in close, washing lines strung overhead, battered flowerboxes at the windows. Somewhere, a shutter is banging in the wind. 

He’s moving more on instinct than anything else. He has no idea how to find Illya. Illya is a cat. He won’t be in the water. He doesn’t think he would steal a boat and forge away from the island. He doesn’t think he’s  _ that _ freaked out. But there’s a lot of dry land in this island city. 

He stumbles on a paving slab in the dark, and puts a hand out to the close building wall. He can feel rough, ancient bricks. If he stumbled near a canal he’d be taking a swim again, and he’s spent enough time in that water today. He wishes he had a flashlight, but he doesn’t, so he just has to rely on the small amount of light in the air. Most of the street lighting around here is electric, and it’s all out. There’s just enough contrast between the buildings and the clouded sky to see the end of the calle. He comes out into a little campiello and stares around him. There’s a church just silhouetted against the dark sky, and the dark entrance of another calle nearby.

He can feel Illya, somehow. If he doesn’t think, he can feel where he would have gone, as if he’s a dog following an almost imperceptible scent. He moves without thought, across the little square. No, not that calle, the other one. He plunges in and follows it all the way down to a narrow rio, and an arching bridge. There are little lights here, just a few. There’s a light shining on the prow of a boat, glistening on the water, and a few warm glows through un-shuttered windows. Oil lamps, or candles, lighting up families while the electricity is still out.

He keeps walking, pushing the awful wet sleet out of his eyes, pushing his lank hair back off his face. It’s so cold. This isn’t the Venice that people dream of.

There.  He’s coming out into the Piazza San Marco. Of course that’s where he finds himself. It seems inevitable. He hadn’t  _ known  _ Illya would come here, but somehow he had known.

He looks around, and knows exactly where he’s going. That tall monolith standing alone in the square. The Campanile. He’s seen it in the daylight, under the sun; a tall, solid, beautiful tower, red-bricked with a verdigris spire. He strides across the piazza in the relentless sleeting rain, head down, watching the flags. He doesn’t know if Illya will see him or not. It doesn’t matter. There’s only one way out of that place.

It doesn’t surprise him that the door is unlocked. Illya tends to secrete picks in every article of clothing he has. There would have been one or two in the pockets of his slacks. He pictures him there, standing in the freezing rain, fumbling with cold hands and a tiny pick at the formidable lock on the door. Of course he had managed to pick it. Illya is a genius at picking locks.

Napoleon can move as silently as Illya, and he creeps up the stairs as if he’s stalking the most dangerous of criminals. God knows, Illya is more dangerous than all of them. He comes out into the belfry, and stands there for a moment, just looking around. It’s almost pitch black in here, but he can see him there, over at the glassless window. He’s nothing but a dark shape against the dark sky outside.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says softly, still at a distance. Startling him would be dangerous.

Illya jerks, but doesn’t turn. Napoleon crosses the floor. The space smells of damp wood and dust. Illya is soaked, as soaked as Napoleon is now too. They’re just as wet as they were when they clambered from the canal. Illya is shivering, but his hands are gripped hard over the stone sill.

‘Do you know how dangerous it was, going out of that room without your gun?’ Napoleon asks him quietly.

Illya’s hand immediately goes to where his holster should be – and comes back empty.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘My gun...’

Napoleon takes it out of his pocket and hands it to him. ‘Your gun,’ he says. ‘Did you know there’s still a very pleasant fire in our hotel room? There’s still a lamp burning.’

Illya doesn’t reply. He’s looking out over the city. Napoleon stands next to him and looks out too. There’s almost nothing to see. Little glints, sometimes, on the water. Little glows of light from houses that don’t have their shutters closed. It’s a blackout scene. He’s seen it before, in Manhattan, but here there aren’t even cars lighting up the streets. It’s such a curious sight.

Somewhere above them, the whole sky lights up in a white sheet, then rolls and rumbles so forcefully that he feels the vibration through his feet. For a moment he sees everything, then it is gone again. He wishes he had been looking at Illya, instead of at the spreading view.

‘You’re not going to be damned,’ Napoleon tells him softly. ‘You haven’t sinned. No one is going to take you away.’

‘No,’ Illya murmurs.

It feels like an ache in Napoleon’s chest, as if he has developed some terrible condition that makes his heart swell to twice its size. He doesn’t think he can bear life without Illya. He can’t bear going back to simple friendship, a friendship that would always be tainted by the thought of what happened here.

‘Illya,’ he says.

He puts a hand over Illya’s. His fingers are like ice.

‘Illya, I love you,’ he says. ‘That’s not dirty. It’s not wrong. I love you. It’s just love. It’s as clean and pure as spring sunshine.’

‘I know,’ Illya says, his voice still that low murmur, almost inaudible.

‘I need you to trust me,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘Illya, I  _ need _ you to trust me.’

An exhale. It’s so long and sudden it sounds like a bladder deflating. It sounds as if Illya is about to collapse into nothing. Napoleon catches him. Illya isn’t falling, but Napoleon catches him all the same. He folds him into his arms and holds him. He doesn’t kiss him or stroke him. He does nothing sexual. He just holds him so tightly he can feel his heart beating. He can feel the shaking. He doesn’t know if Illya is crying. Illya isn’t a man who cries. He’s just shaking, maybe from cold, maybe from emotion. From something. Lightning sheers across the sky again, and Napoleon sees Illya’s t-shirt plastered to his back with wet. He sees the minute shaking through his skin.

‘We can go back home,’ Napoleon says eventually. ‘Both of us. We can go back home and we can sort this out. We can take a few days vacation time. We’re both owed it. We can sort this out.’

‘I –  _ want _ to,’ Illya says eventually.

He pulls away from Napoleon and stands at the window again, looking out into the dark. 

‘I want to fight all of these voices inside me,’ he says. ‘I want to fight my – the voice of my grandfather, the voices of my teachers, the voices of my state. I want to fight – all those red-blooded American men and women who stand in judgement. I want to fight them all.’

‘ _ We _ can fight them,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘Together, Illya. None of this has to be on your own. That’s the whole point of this. It’s you and me. Us. Together.’

‘I know,’ Illya says. He sighs, shaking his head. ‘I know. It – will take some time, Napoleon. Can you bear with that? Will you be able to bear with me? With my slowness?’

Napoleon smiles. He wants to kiss him, but he doesn’t think it’s quite time yet. That’s part of Illya’s slowness. He doesn’t want to scare him away like a feral cat.

‘I can bear with any amount of slowness if it will take us to the right destination,’ he promises. ‘It’s been years already, hasn’t it?’

Illya laughs softly. It’s a very quiet sound. Thunder rumbles again, effacing everything human, every human sound.

Napoleon takes his hand again, and squeezes it.

‘Yes,’ Illya says. ‘Yes, it’s been longer than you know.’

He looks at Napoleon, and for a moment his face is illuminated as lightning flashes. His eyes are so blue. His hair is plastered to his head, brown instead of blond. He looks small and pale. He looks weak, but Napoleon knows there is nothing weak about him. The flash is so fast that the image is burned onto his retinas. He feels as though he will be able to see Illya’s eyes in the dark for weeks.

‘Come back to the hotel,’ Napoleon says. ‘There’s a fire there. We can dry out –  _ again _ – and try to get some sleep. No seduction. No sin. Just sleep, in that good, warm bed, together.’

‘Sin,’ Illya murmurs. He lifts his head suddenly. ‘I know it’s not sin, Napoleon. I  _ know _ it. I – just need to teach myself. I need to – slough off all the voices in my head. It’s hard work. They’ve been there since I was thirteen.’

‘I know,’ Napoleon assures him. ‘I understand.’

‘I know,’ Illya says.

‘Can I kiss you?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Is that permitted?’

He can feel the reaction in Illya’s hand. His fingers clench a little, and then relax.

‘Your secret weapon,’ he says. ‘Yes, Napoleon, you can kiss me. I want you to keep kissing me. Like a course of treatment. An inoculation.’

Napoleon touches a hand to Illya’s chin. ‘The doctor is always very happy to prescribe. I make house calls, too.’

So he kisses him. It lasts a long time. Thunder rumbles and lightning lights up the world, and the city appears and disappears from view, while Napoleon kisses Illya, and Illya kisses him back. Warmth seems to grow. Illya is no longer shivering. Napoleon feels hot as a furnace. He feels as though he could kiss Illya forever.

Their lips fall apart, and he blinks. Outside, there are lights everywhere. Lights in the streets, lights in the houses, lights outside doors. The sleet is falling in sheets, and every sliver is lit by the glimmer of electric lights.

‘Let’s get back to the hotel, while we can see our way,’ Illya says.

It’s still half-dark in the belfry, but Napoleon can see the flush in his cheeks and the way his lips have reddened, and how the awful doubt has left his face. He can see that things have changed.

Holding Illya’s hand in his, he guides him across the belfry to the door. They drop the ir clasp to navigate the steps back down the tower. It’s just as dark in the stairwell as ever. When they slip out through the door, Illya turns to carefully lock it again with his pick.

‘Better to leave it as we found it,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ Napoleon says.

This bell tower feels like the one thing that is unchangeable. Everything else is in flux. Everything else is moving. The sleet is thickening, the light rippling through it. The clouds are roiling in the sky. Illya is smiling, and when they turn to walk across the piazza, he reaches out again to take Napoleon’s hand.


End file.
